Your Rewards: We’ll be monitoring the account signups to look for our backers names and emails to enable the rewards you selected (Basic account, Plus account, Kickstarter badge), but if you don’t see your account change from Free to the option you chose soon after signup, just drop us an email at info@explory.com and we’ll get that done quickly.

Create an explory! We’d be ecstatic if you created an explory and made it Public so others can see it. It's doesn't have to be long or perfect - and one of the great things about Explory is you can keep adding to it and working on it anytime.

It's soooo easy! There are 2 quick ways to get started:

1. Tap on "Story Ideas" and Explory will analyze the photos on your phone and based on time and location suggest some stories as drafts that you can edit.

2. Press the + button in the upper right and either

- select some photos and videos in your photo library, or

- take some photos or videos right now with Explory’s camera

And the easiest part of creating a great explory? The Narration! Yes, it might seem like it would be daunting but when you try it, you'll discover how amazingly easy it is. You just tap the Microphone in the right side menu and you'll see a red button. Hold down the button as you describe the image and let go. (Or you can tap to start recording and tap to finish - either way) You can swipe to the next image and tap again to record your next narration. Really, it's as easy as talking on your phone.

Ideas for explories:

Events - Create a story about a event while it's in progress and refine it later.

Projects - Document and share your project as it's happening.

Business - Create a story about your business to explain your product or service.

Reporting - Capture important stories about the world around you and share them.

Family - Don't just capture the photos and videos, capture the story with narration.

School - Do a project report as an explory, document a field trip.

Teaching - Share your expertise with others.

Share your explory! When your explory is ready, tap the left side menu share button and Publish to the cloud, setting Privacy to Public to have it show up in the gallery. Whether it’s public or private, you can share your explory with your friends and family via email, messaging, Facebook or Twitter, and that’s also under the Share button.

We are incredibly excited that now everyone can get the app - we can’t wait to see what kinds of stories you will create. We’d love to get feedback on your experience with Explory - please email us comments, questions, and ideas to info@explory.com.

We've continued to refine Explory and we're getting close to first release and submitting it to the Apple App Store for approval. We've received some great feedback from our Alpha and Beta testers, but we'd really love some more, so we're inviting all of our Kickstarter supporters to test out the current (fresh today!) Beta release of Explory.

Beta Logistics: It will be a first-come, first-serve process as it takes a while to set people up to install the Beta. We should be able to accommodate everyone who's interested, but there is a chance we may have to limit the number of Beta testers we can support. If you are interested in participating, please send an email to alpha@explory.com - please include your name and the email address you have registered with Kickstarter (which should be the email address that received this message). We will send you and email with instructions for installing Explory. Be forewarned, installing beta software takes some time and patience, it's a bit of a back-and-forth dance to register your iPhone or iPad and it could take a couple days to work through.

The evolved Explory: Below you'll see a couple screen shots of what Explory is looking like now. You can also check out an actual live explory in our Web player. The Web player gives a simulation of the experience of watching an explory within the Explory app, but it is not yet as refined as the actual application and works a bit differently, since viewers don't necessarily have a touchscreen. We've only done modest testing on the various desktop and mobile browsers, so depending on which combination you are using you could run into some problems and inconsistencies. But, we're making good progress and the Web player experience is getting better each day.

We've been toiling away building Explory and making some fantastic progress. Our goal was to ship the product in July, and we're a bit behind schedule, but not too far off. We're currently targeting to ship in August. We've done 6 Alpha releases to our Alpha testing group of Kickstarter supporters, and are now ready to ship our first Beta release. If you signed up at a support level that includes participation in the Beta program, you should receive a separate email in the next day or so explaining how to install the software.

The product is getting really great! We've been tuning the interactions and using some of the funds we raised to hire some UX (user experience) and VD (visual design) experts to help out. Once the Beta is in some hands, we'll post some stories for you to see. As mentioned before, we'll be sending out a survey also to collect information for anything that needs to be mailed.

We achieved our Kickstarter funding target, so you are all now officially part of the Explory team!

Thanks SO MUCH for getting behind our vision and participating with us.

Over the next few days, depending on what reward you pledged toward, you will receive a survey from us to gather the information we need to fulfill these. Mailing addresses if your pledge included a certificate, correct emails for sending alpha or beta installation instructions, and so on.

We're excited to be working with you, as early adopters, to get your input and ideas on Explory so that we get the product to be as amazing as possible, and help you craft the important stories that you want to share.